tax when they had no elected local government and no parliamentary representation. He was known to have pro-Labor views. In a 1973 interview, Gough Whitlam said that had his parents been British, they would have been Liberals. "In the Australian context they would vote Labor as the party of change and public responsibility – things being done by elected persons rather than by self-perpetuating directorates." Whitlam was also a friend of Evatt, who was Attorney-General in the 1941–49 Labor government and later Leader of the Opposition. Whitlam bought one of the first blocks of land offered for public auction in Canberra in the Blandfordia'' auction that occurred on 12 December 1924. He paid $440 for Block 1, Section 2 now known as 70 Empire Circuit (formerly Australia Circuit) and lived there for more than 30 years. Influence on son Early biographers of Gough Whitlam were quick to detect his father's influence: "The key to Fred Whitlam's character was tolerance – he loathed any form of prejudice on grounds of class, religion or race – and his overwhelming preoccupation was human rights... Related to his concern for fair treatment of minorities and individuals was a deep interest in foreign affairs. Fred Whitlam was the driving force in the Canberra branch of the Institute of International Affairs in its early years... All this rubbed off on his son." Whitlam was a pioneer of international human rights law in Australia, and this was the area in which he exercised his most powerful influence over his son Gough Whitlam's career. As a member of the Australian delegation to the Paris Peace Conference in 1946, Whitlam argued Australia's case for a permanent international human-rights court, an idea whose time was yet to come. "Instructed by Evatt not to compromise, he reported to his wife that he had 'stiffened the sinews and summoned up the blood', but to no avail.". He contributed to drafts of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Whitlam retired as Crown Solicitor in April 1949, but continued to be closely involved in United Nations matters as an adviser to the Department of External Affairs. He was an Australian representative at the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in 1950 and 1954. He died in Canberra in 1961, by which time his son was Deputy Leader of the Federal Labor Party. Graham Freudenberg writes of Fred Whitlam's influence on Gough Whitlam: "Whitlam's